of the CIA's role in
Watergate, and that Howard Hunt was a double agent inside the
Nixon camp. A few years later, in High Times (April 1977) sans
Hersh, Sturgis now spoke. He depicted Watergate as a war not with
Sam Ervin and the Post on one side and Nixon on the other; but as
the CIA versus Nixon. None of this was in Hersh's piece, which
presented the typical White House-funneling-"hush money"-to-the-
burglars story which could have been written by Woodward.
Next for Hersh were his exposures in the New York Times of CIA
counter intelligence chief James Angleton's domestic operations.
Domestic ops were banned by the CIA's original charter, although
they had been done ever since that Agency's inception. But at
Christmas, 1974, Hersh's stories were splashed all over the
Times. Hersh won a Pulitzer for them. One would think this would
be a strong indication of Hersh's independence from, even
antagonism for the CIA. One would be wrong. As everyone familiar
with the Agency's history knows, in 1974 there was a huge turf
war going on between Angleton and Colby (formerly of the Vietnam
Phoenix program). Angleton lost this struggle, largely through
Hersh's stories. But the week before Hersh's stories were
printed, on December 16, 1974, Colby addressed the Council of
Foreign Relations on this very subject and admitted to the
domestic spying (Imperial Brain Trust p. 61). Why? Because their
selective exposure could be used to oust Angleton. Many now
believe that Hersh's stories were part of Colby's campaign to
oust Angleton, sanctioned by the CIA Director himself.
Next up for Hersh was the story of the downing of KAL 700. This
was the curious case of the Korean Air Liner shot down over
Russian air space after having drifted off course. Many suspected
that, as with the My Lai case, there was more here than